


Journey's Beginning

by Miri1984



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, mentions of inquisitor/solas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 04:08:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2837480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saoirse Hawke is off to Weisshaupt after the events at Adamant Fortress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journey's Beginning

Varric found her in the guest rooms, packing her things. She still had that ridiculous staff with the nude woman on top, leaning against the head of the bed, and her pack was mostly done. A few articles were scattered on the bedspread and she was looking at them as though they were personally offensive and he guessed that, like always seemed to happen, she’d ended up with more things than she’d brought and couldn’t fit the old things back in.

“You don’t have to loot every damned corpse for coin any more, Hawke,” he said. “Leave some of it behind.”

She looked up, and he took in the deep shadows under her eyes and the sadness behind them. She’d  liked Stroud, he knew there was history there that he didn’t know, something about Blondie and his time with the Wardens at Amaranthine, but she’d always been hostile to the wardens in general. She’d put on a good face for Carver and joked that it was better than him becoming a templar. What they’d done to her father — Larius’s fate and the fate of the wardens who’d tried to stop them at Corypheus’ prison — well it all added up, he guessed. 

“I’m not going back to Kirkwall, Varric,” she said. “I’m heading to Weisshaupt. They need to know what happened here.”

“Is that why you’re going? You should take Carver with you. And…” Anders.

“Don’t. He’s in no condition to travel. Not until this shit is sorted. I don’t want the wardens deciding he’s a threat and killing him just because Justice won’t let Corypheus control him.”

“He won’t be happy.”

“I think I can count on one hand the number of times Anders has actually been happy, Varric, so let’s just say he’s going to have to live with it.”

She moved a few things on the bed around in a vague attempt to prioritise them.

 _“You’re_ not happy,” Varric said. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this you should have gone on being happy psychopaths with Blondie, maybe spawned a few tiny abominations and…”

She shook her head. “Varric, you didn’t see what Corypheus did to him. Again. I had to come.”

Varric remembered the last time he’d seen Anders, on the outskirts of Kirkwall, leaning heavily on his staff and looking blankly into the distance. He’d felt different, after the explosion. Lighter. Varric had been too angry to talk to him, most of the time they’d been travelling. Saoirse had insisted that Fenris leave with Isabela, Merrill had run into a band of elven refugees and taken her leave. Aveline had stayed in Kirkwall, at the insistence of the the Knight Captain, so it was just the four of them, Carver poking the fire angrily and glaring at the man his sister called her husband while Varric tried not to think about everything he’d lost. 

They’d agreed to separate then, Carver and Varric traveling back towards Ansburg and Varric eventually ending up being brought in by Cassandra’s men. Anders and Saoirse had kept in touch, through the mage underground and Varric’s dwarf contacts, but he’d not seen the apostate again and not wanted to. “He’s not well then, I take it?”

“Justice is looking after him. But he’s not exactly pleasant company right now, no.”

“So. Why go to Weisshaupt then? The Inquisitor could use your help and…”

“Varric she doesn’t need my help. I’m just an extra mage in the mix and she already has Solas and Vivienne and Dorian and Andraste’s tits, are all of them mages? I ran into the grand fucking enchanter in the library it’s like…” her shoulders slumped and she sat on the bed, her voice catching. “It’s like nothing we did means any fucking thing at all, Varric.”

A few things slotted into place. Why she wanted to sacrifice herself in the fade. Why the edge had gone from her wit, why she could barely muster the energy to be tactless, why her shoulders, once so broad and strong, were bowed and curled inwards.

“That’s why you don’t want to go back to him.”

She wiped a hand over her face. “I miss him so much, but until this is finished anything I say is just going to… he’s come a long way, Varric, we’ve worked things out. We helped the circles rebel we got to a point where we were good, we were productive, we were doing what we both wanted and then.”

She threw a small fireball at the floor. The floor was stone, and Varric was familiar with her temper, so he didn’t flinch so much as just… sigh.

“Can you tell him?” she asked. Her voice was small.

“You want me to talk to Blondie?”

“Yes, Varric. You’re the only one outside of … you’re the only one I trust not to give him away. And I have to get to Weisshaupt quickly if they send more wardens into the range of Corypheus’s madness the Inquisitor is going to regret that decision she made at Adamant and I really don’t want that to happen.”

“Hawke I don’t even know where he is.”

She laughed then, grinning at him that way she used to have. “I’m going to _tell_ you, Varric. I’m going to. I’m … “ she doubled over on the bed, holding her stomach for a second, looking green in the face and Varric would have almost thought she was drunk, except that they really hadn’t had time, they’d come straight here from Adamant.

“Hawke!” He rushed forward, touching her arm, her waist, and feeling the full weight of her as she leaned on him.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Just… I need to get out of here Varric. I need to be gone. These people aren’t my people.”

“I’m your people!” he said.

“Varric, I love you. But you’re not anyone’s. You’re yours.” She straightened up, smiling again, the flush of red under her freckles the only sign that anything had been wrong in the first place.

“I want it to go back,” Varric said. “To how it was, in Kirkwall.”

“Varric it was a shitfight in Kirkwall and you know it.”

He squeezed her arm, probably too tightly, but hey. She didn’t care and he knew it. “It was our shitfight though,” he said. “Yours and mine.”

“Fuck,” Hawke said. “Like we had any control over any of the fucking shit that happened there. I should have left with the loot from the deep roads. Should have taken mother back to Ferelden or come here to Orlais and set us up like fancy ladies. I should have dragged Anders by the scruff of his fucking coat into the ocean.” Her arms were around her waist then, and she was rocking back and forth and he didn’t think she knew about the tears that were running down her face and ancestors take him before he’d tell her.

“Hawke…”

“I can’t lose them, Varric. I can’t lose any more of them.” He wanted to take her hand and hold it but she wasn’t good with physical affection and he wasn’t either and he figured just the fact that he was there would be enough. 

There was a long moment where she cried. She didn’t cry like she was supposed to. Although Varric wasn’t good at crying, and he wasn’t good at recognising how other people cried either. She didn’t try to hide it, and she didn’t try to mop up the mess as it happened. It was all snot and tears and ugliness for a while, and that was okay, because they’d seen so much worse in their time.

They’d known each other for long enough that it didn’t feel strange, and he didn’t feel like he needed to leave. She’d seen him like this, although those details never made it into the stories. They’d been through hell more than once, and it shouldn’t feel more like the end of the world than all the other hundreds of times they’d been here.

But there were a big green fucking holes in the sky, and Blondie wasn’t here, and neither were the others. He’d always looked at Hawke as though she knew what was happening — she was the driving force behind them all, but here, amidst the inquisition, he wondered where they’d come from, how she’d gotten to be as large in his mind (and everyone else’s) as she had, when she was just a woman who was afraid for her family.

Her tears stopped and she stood up, turning back to her pack, throwing a good number of things back onto the bed that he was _certain_ she’d need, stuffing other things back in.

“You don’t have to go to Weisshaupt, Saoirse,” he said softly. “You can stay here with us. The Inquisitor will look after Blondie, even, she’s… she’s nice to apostates. Even nice to demons and spirits occasionally. I’m sure Solas will have reams of questions to ask Blondie and Justice you’ll probably have to drag them away from each other…”

“I hate the wardens,” Saoirse said, not looking back at him. “But I owe them a debt. Weisshaupt needs to know. Tell Anders where I’m going. Tell Carver. I don’t know what they’ll do with that information but try not to let them get themselves killed.” She tangled a hand in her braid, sitting back down on the bed and lightly punching the pack, which was full now, and perfectly packed. “If no one tells them about what’s happening with Corypheus we’ll just have another Adamant on our hands down the line, you know that as well as I do.”

“It doesn’t have to be _you.”_

 _“I_ got Stroud killed, Varric,” she said. 

“I seem to remember _Brambles_ giving the order for him to stay,” Varric said.

“Why was that do you think,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him.

Varric spread his hands. “Look we stand around in the snow a lot, she gets bored, asks questions, I tell her stories. There’s only so much spirit history from Chuckles she can listen to before she craves something a little more entertaining.”

“You don’t ever tell them the awful parts, Varric.”

“Get out,” Varric grinned. “The awful parts with you are the best ones.”

She stared at the wall for a while before getting up and slinging her pack onto her back, slotting L’il Leandra in behind it. Varric was reminded of Solas, suddenly, and his heart clenched. She wasn’t meant to be on her own like this. He’d find Blondie and Carver, get them to go with her. Or…

“I can come with you,” he said.

She laughed. “No,” she said. “Cassandra wouldn’t let you. And you can do more good here, old friend.”

“You really shouldn’t go alone.”

“Your legs are too short to walk in the snow, Varric.”

“Anders is going to kill me. _Carver_ is going to kill me. You don’t like me at all, do you?”

She put a hand on his shoulder, then hunkered down on one knee awkwardly. “Varric I would have died fifty times over without you, and not just from some random hurlock or templar shooting at me.” He blinked up at her, still taller than him even when she knelt like this, then nodded.

“Okay then. Go. Don’t get yourself killed.”

She smiled sadly at him. _Please,_ he said to himself. _Be safe._

He made his way up to the walls of Skyhold to watch her leave, a single black figure, the bright spot of her hair red against the white, white snow.

Ceindrech found him there, an hour later. “She’s gone then? Solas said he felt her leave.”

“Sometimes Chuckles is really creepy, you know that, right Brambles?” 

She quirked her mouth at him. “I suppose it depends on what you’re used to, Varric,” she said glancing out in the direction Saoirse had gone. _“Dareth shiral, Hawke,”_ she said under her breath. _“Ma serannas.”_

One day, perhaps someone would get to say thank you to her face. “Come on, Brambles, it’s freezing up here,” Varric said, turning away, back towards Skyhold. “We have an elder one to fight.”


End file.
